Source Identification for the Smoluchowski Equation Using an Ensemble of Adjoint Equation Solutions

A source identification algorithm for systems of nonlinear ordinarydifferential equations of production-destruction type is applied to aninverse problem for a discretized Smoluchowski equation. An unknownsource function is estimated by time series of measurements of particleconcentrations of a specific size. Based on an ensemble of adjointequation solutions, a sensitivity operator is constructed that relatesperturbations of the sought-for model parameters with perturbations ofthe measured values. This reduces the inverse problem to a family ofquasilinear operator equations. To solve the equations, an algorithm ofthe Newton–Kantorovich type with r-pseudoinversematrices is used. The efficiency and properties of the algorithm arestudied numerically.